Kansas Group Tries To Remove Evolution From Schools By Claiming Science Is A Religion

[RKP5637]

It just never ends in Kansas. I know some DU'ers live there, but damn, Kansas is a bizarre place. It just never ends. Hopefully at least Brownback will eventually be voted out.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/kansas-group-tries-remove-evolution-schools-claiming-science-religion

A Kansas-based group that “promotes the religious rights of parents, children, and taxpayers” is challenging the state’s science standards because they include the teaching of evolution, which the group claims is a religion and therefore should be excluded from science class.

As the AP reports, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) claims that public schools “promote a ‘non-theistic religious worldview’ by allowing only ‘materialistic’ or ‘atheistic’ explanations to scientific questions.” The group argues that by teaching evolution “the state would be ‘indoctrinating’ impressionable students in violation of the First Amendment.”

COPE’s challenge [PDF] states that the teaching of evolution “amounts to an excessive government entanglement with religion” and violates the rights of Christian parents.

Indeed, COPE’s stated mission is to create “religious[ly] neutral” schools that do not promote “pantheistic and materialistic religions, including Atheism and Religious (‘Secular’) Humanism” - a category under which it includes “Darwinian evolution.”

[greymattermom]

1. So, does this group plan to close the medical school?

Kansas City is in real trouble if that happens.

[RKP5637]

2. Who knows ... sometimes it's so bizarre words pale to describe what

they want. About the only way to handle Kansas is to leave.

[riversedge]

3. The National Center for Science Education calls COPE’s lawsuit “silly” and “frivolous,”

golly gee--doesn't the RW follow their own dictates??





....The National Center for Science Education calls COPE’s lawsuit “silly” and “frivolous,” and the Baptist Joint Committee says COPE’s argument “makes no sense” and that the group is effectively saying schools should be “teaching no science at all.”

Just like the bogus “teach the controversy” or “teach both sides” refrains, COPE’s lawsuit is part of a long line of Creationist challenges to the teaching of evolution.

Religious Right heavyweight John Eidsmoe, a mentor to conservative politicians like Michele Bachmann, wrote in his 1984 book God & Caesar that conservative Christian activists should base their attacks on evolution on the premise that evolution is actually just as much a religious idea as Creationism, and therefore the two should be treated the same way.


- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/kansas-group-tries-remove-evolution-schools-claiming-science-religion#sthash.3qt54spa.dpuf

[RKP5637]

4. Anymore, I think many of the RW are organically dysfunctional, it's difficult

for them to comprehend linkage between their dysfunctional thoughts, challenges and utterances. In my book, they are such a bunch of losers. And all logic fails on them.

[riversedge]

13. Well, start with---they are unable to comprehend that their thoughts are

dysfunctional--from the start. Comprehending 'linkages' is not on the radar.

[RKP5637]

19. Yep! In short, there just ain't much to work with when all you're talking to with

them is a bag of rocks.

[Berlum]

5. Um hmmm...

[riversedge]

6. Very much a good read: Kansas Board Votes to Adopt Common Science Standards on June 12, 2013

KS--to say the least has had a rocky science process in schools-yet a few years back some moderates managed to set in place a study and got these standards in schools.

Now along comes the crazies once again!!





http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/06/kansas_board_votes_to_adopt_co.html



Kansas Board Votes to Adopt Common Science Standards
By Erik Robelen on June 12, 2013 9:22 AM

By a vote of 8 to 2, the Kansas state board of education yesterday adopted the Next Generation Science Standards as their own. With that step, Kansas joins Rhode Island and Kentucky in approving the standards (though Kentucky's action is conditional at this point, as I explain below).

Kansas, Kentucky, and Rhode Island are part of the coalition of 26 "lead state partners" that teamed up with several national organizations to craft the science standards.

The K-12 standards, more than three years in the making, went through two rounds of public comment before they were issued in final form in April. Key tenets of the standards include providing a greater emphasis on depth over breadth in science education and asking students to apply their learning through the practices of scientific inquiry and engineering design.

The standards make clear that biological evolution is a fundamental principle of understanding the life sciences. In the past, the issue of teaching evolution in schools has been especially controversial in Kansas, and at least one of the board members voting against the standards referenced this as part of his opposition (as well as concerns about how the standards treat climate change).....

[DrDan]

7. I am very grateful Kansas' presence

it occasionally takes the focus off of my home state of Florida from the DU region-bashers.

Actually I lived in Kansas for a few years - Topeka - glad to be gone from there. Not the best years of my life. But, I do recognize there are many good Kansans, so will not bash the state.

Brownback, Yoder, Pat Roberts . . . . ouch.

[RKP5637]

10. Yes, there are many good Kansans. Sadly, the state gets knocked because of the

wackos that get elected into positions of power. It is so sad, because there are many nice things about Kansas.

[Bandit]

8. It seems to me they are openly admitting teaching religion amounts to indoctrination

Sometimes I don't think they even think about what they say.

[RKP5637]

35. Yep, they are just parrots, they don't think! n/t

[bemildred]

9. No science is not a belief system, it's a heuristic method, empiricism, that is all.

If you think it is a belief system, that's because you don't really know what it is and you are projecting.

[RKP5637]

11. It would be interesting to see a correlation of these individuals knowledge of

science, their educational levels and their proficiency and grasp of very basic scientific knowledge. My hunch is they would score at a very low level in basic science knowledge.

[theHandpuppet]

12. I worry about the Kansas kids who want a future in the sciences

What of the kids who want to become doctors, astronomers, geologists, biologists et al? How could they even pass the entrance exams to be admitted to the best schools when they've been taught the world is 6,000 years old and Jesus rode a dinosaur?

[RKP5637]

36. It's a total mind twister. They make absolutely no sense and have an extremely strange

worldview. Frankly, I think it's a psychosis of sorts. And, they are ruining the future for their children with their warped mind bending of youth, especially in their youth indoctrination camps and schools. To me, they practice a form of child abuse.

[Egalitarian Thug]

14. What I don't and never have understood is why any of the thinking people that

live in these places, live in these places? It's not like this is new, all of these places have been like this for generations. They've been crippling their children and following a parade of the most obvious charlatans all that time as well.

I've been in almost all of these places and there's nothing in any of them that can't be found in sane parts of the country, what are you waiting for?

[struggle4progress]

16. There have been wackos everywhere I've ever lived

[Egalitarian Thug]

20. There are wackos everywhere, it's just that most places don't put them in charge of anything.

I don't know if he's still there, but there was a guy that stood out in Time's Square for years doing his bible rant for any and all to hear and enjoy. But NYC didn't elect him to the school board.

[RKP5637]

18. Many do. I think with better communications of today, etc., many are recognizing more

and more that it's a regressive and backward place, at least for some of the youth. I think some older people stay because that's what they are use to.

And then others are part of the problem.

And others are trying to make changes. However, since the last elections in Kansas democrats and moderates have become a rare breed. I doubt they are really going to be able to change Kansas much in the short term, I think it will take a few generations to change Kansas, and then I think, it will be questionable just what direction it is headed. When TPTB hold Texas up as an example of what Kansas should be it's hard to think much progress is going to be made for a more open and diversified state.

[DrDan]

33. why would any thinking person want to live in a state where elected officials would vote for slavery

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2014, 08:08 PM - Edit history (1)

why would anyone want to live in the desert?

c'mon - why would you criticize anyone for living where they do. ridiculous.

Could be family.

Could be the job.

Could be simple circumstances.

No place is perfect. No place is all-bad. You like Nevada, I like Florida. I feel no need to justify why I have lived here for 31 years. I am confident you don't either.

I have been in Las Vegas many times - business. Glad every time I left. But I do not criticize anyone who lives there and likes it.

"thinking people"???? what a silly comment.

btw - http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/nevada-republican-would-allow-slavery

[Barack_America]

15. Well then, buy-bye physics, mathematics, biology and chemistry as well.

I'm sure Kansas's economy will thrive as a result.

[RKP5637]

17. What Kansas doesn't get (TPTB) IMO is highly educated people leave Kansas. Many people

don't want to put up with this nonsense, so they leave Kansas for more open and diversified areas. Certain areas try to attract highly educated and creative people, but the friends I have, for example, want absolutely nothing to do with Kansas, they just have too many other opportunities in far better places.

[earthside]

27. Think about this ....

... Kansas is an agricultural state.

Think of all the sciences associated with crop and livestock production.

What is even weirder about this is how it parallels the dogmatism of Lysenkoism in Stalinist Russia.

[Jefferson23]

21. This is nuts, and they are clueless! n/t

[Coyotl]

22. Lawsuit to challenge doctors who practice science, Christians seek to bar anyone who studied science

or professes Secular Humanism from practicing medicine in Kansas. Only ordained members of the clergy will be allowed to operate and prescribe medicines because they have a monopoly on truth.

I'm working on my next Onion article

[mathematic]

23. COPE fighting the good fight against Scientific Materialism

We must beat back the forces of Inquiry that so wantonly replace the wonder and magic of the world with the hollow filler of understanding. There's only one true certainty: the unmeasurable, unobservable, untestable spiritual world. Who are scientists to deny my personal experience? As if something only exists if a scientist says it does. How can they so arrogantly reject the impossible when their whole discipline is based off of statistics and probabilities?

It's like I was telling a friend of mine who was afflicted with hay fever until he had it fixed by a chiropractor. Scientists deny the unexplainable, like how allergies are caused by vertebral subluxations and a chiropractor, free of scientific materialist dogma, can cure them by adjusting the spine. We need chiropractors of the soul teaching evolution in our schools.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. I know I should not laugh but

I guess the Petri dish is a holy object, with some agar it can even transubstantiation into bacteria colonies.

[RKP5637]

34. I saw the 'Virgin? Mary' once in a Petri dish!

It must be holy?

[Lunacee_2013]

25. *Headbangdesk*

The conservatives have figured out that if you can get people to believe in your worldview, no matter how crazy it is, when they're young, then they'll hardly ever question you when they're old enough to vote. You might have noticed more and more conservatives running for school boards or getting on those book review boards lately, although they've been doing that for decades in some states. If they can control what young students read and study, then it becomes much easier to control what they think and how they will eventually vote. Why spend a bunch of money trying to change people's minds (and risk them not voting for you anyways), if you can just take that money and turn the kids of today into your forever faithful voters of tomorrow? All you have to do is wait, plus donating all that time and money to the school system makes you look nice and caring!

[RKP5637]

37. Definitely what is going on ... in Kansas, for example, there are many schools for

religious indoctrination.

[workinclasszero]

26. Brownbackistan

Our own little theocracy in the heartland. At times it makes Texas look liberal! smh

[Stainless]

28. My Maternal Grandmother was born in Kansas

After a life of debauchery and alcoholism, she found Jesus in a revival tent in the 1930's. She would have been proud to support these misguided, anti-science morons in their efforts to enforce bigotry and ignorance. They are every bit as evil as any religious extremists including the Taliban.

[RKP5637]

38. They are, and many give them a free pass in the US. They are a destructive

negative and regressive force AKA the American Taliban.

[benld74]

29. Evolution being a religion makes about as much sense as creationism being a science!!!!

[RKP5637]

39. Well said!!! n/t

[hootinholler]

30. Then magic ocurrs is never a valid hypothesis

I have no problem with them teaching religion as science if they have any scientific evidence to support it.

Otherwise they can have a nice steaming cup of STFU.

[Vashta Nerada]

31. Science is very much anti-religion.

How in the hell can this group even claim it's a religion?

The stupid. It burns.

[Comrade Grumpy]

32. What a Bizarro World notion. n/t

[billh58]

40. I totally agree with members of COPE --

since they have not evolved beyond the single-cell stage, we shouldn't be teaching them complicated shit like science, math, or logic. The Talking Snake can teach them all of the basics they need to know.

[Major Nikon]

41. Never underestimate the stupidity of flat earth morans

[Festivito]

42. Belief in Creation Science versus Science without Creation Science.

Not only would this fail, it would expose Creation Science for what is: a small group of ideologues, curiously funded and only in certain institutions.

Instead, they'll look at the loss of Biology, Chemistry, et. al. and make the Creationists come back with a different suit.